1. Technical Field
This disclosure generally relates to a Web system that comprises an image forming apparatus connected to a communication control device having a print server function that provides a Web server service.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently manufactured image forming apparatuses are normally enabled to receive data from user terminals such as personal computers (PCs) via a network such as a local area network (LAN) using protocols such as Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP), Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP), Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), and Telnet. Such an image forming apparatus is equipped with a communication control device, such as a network interface card (NIC) inserted into an expansion slot of the image forming apparatus, to enable data communications with other devices connected via a network.
A NIC may include a print server function that manages an image forming apparatus, such as a printer, connected to the NIC and enables information processing apparatuses equipped with communication devices to share and use the image forming apparatus via a network. The print server function receives print requests from the information processing apparatuses, i.e. user terminals, and causes the image forming apparatus to process the print requests in sequence. When a user terminal is connected to an image forming apparatus via a NIC including a print server function, the user terminal is freed from a printing task as soon as it sends print data to the NIC where the print data are spooled and processed. Thus, compared with a case where a user terminal is connected directly to an image forming apparatus, the above configuration reduces the load of a user terminal in a printing process. Also, a print server function may be configured to provide a Web server service that enables user terminals to display the status and other information on an image forming apparatus and to display and set configurations of an image forming apparatus via a Web user interface such as a Web browser. Incorporating such a print server function in a NIC of an image forming apparatus improves the usability of a printing system.
One problem in incorporating such functionality in a NIC is that Web contents (programs and data) for providing the functionality consume large amounts of storage space and therefore causes a shortage of storage space in the NIC.
Patent document 1 discloses a printing apparatus including a printing unit and a network card. In the disclosed printing apparatus, machine-dependent Web contents are stored in the printing unit and machine-independent Web contents are stored in the network card. In other words, Web contents are divided and stored in multiple locations to save storage space in the network card.
[Patent document 1] Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2002-259075
Meanwhile, Web contents (for example, Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) files) for displaying information on an image forming apparatus are preferably provided in multiple languages so as to be able to provide information to users of various nationalities. However, in this case, since multilingualization increases the data size of Web contents, dividing Web contents into machine-dependent contents and machine-independent contents and storing them separately in an image forming apparatus and a NIC as disclosed in patent document 1 alone is not enough to solve the shortage of storage space in a NIC.
The data size of Web contents, i.e. multilingual HTML files, increases as the number of languages increases and this makes it difficult to store those HTML files in a small-capacity storage device, such as a read-only memory (ROM) or a random access memory (RAM), of a NIC. One method to solve this problem is to limit the Web contents to minimum necessary information items or to remove some functions that consume storage space. If this method is not enough to solve the problem, it is necessary to increase the storage capacity of a NIC by, for example, installing another storage device or by replacing the current storage device with a high-capacity storage device. However, increasing the storage capacity of a NIC increases the production costs.